6.  The first applicant was born in 1920. She died on 30 April 2006. The second applicant, her daughter and only heir, expressed her wish to pursue the proceedings in her own name and in the name of her deceased mother. The second applicant was born in 1945 and lives in Sofia.
7.  In 1958, Mr Koprinarov, whose heirs the applicants are, purchased from the State one storey of a three-storey house in Plovdiv. The property’s surface area was 109 square metres. The property had belonged to a private person until the nationalisations carried out by the communist regime in Bulgaria in 1947 and for several years afterwards.
8.  After the adoption of the Restitution Law (ЗВСОНИ) in 1992, the former pre-nationalisation owners brought proceedings under section 7 of that law against the applicants, seeking the nullification of the applicants’ title and the restoration of their property.
9.  The case went twice through the court system and the Supreme Court of Cassation gave final judgment on 26 July 1999.
10.  The courts examined and dismissed a number of allegations made by the plaintiffs in respect of alleged breaches of the housing regulations and other legal provisions as in force in 1958. The courts found, however, that a relevant document in the file concerning the 1958 transaction – approval by the Minister of Public Construction – had been signed by a Head of Department in the Ministry, not by the Minister personally. It followed that the person from whom the applicants had inherited had obtained the property unlawfully. The applicants’ title was therefore null and void and they were ordered to vacate the property.
11.  The applicants were evicted from the property on 17 September 2001. The eviction was conducted in the presence of special counsel for the applicants, appointed by the relevant court on the basis that the applicants had not been found at their address and the summonses sent had been repeatedly returned undelivered. The applicants appealed against the acts of the enforcement judge arguing, inter alia, that they had never changed their address and that their belongings had been damaged. The appeals were unsuccessful. The courts noted that the applicants had not been found at the address they had indicated and that therefore there had not been procedural violations. Also, the applicants had failed to collect their belongings for more than a month and had thus been responsible for the damage complained of.
12.  Following their eviction, the applicants wrote repeatedly to the municipal authorities asking for compensation in the form of a municipal apartment or land but did not receive a reply.
13.  On an unspecified date in 1999 the applicants brought an action against the Plovdiv Municipality and the Ministry of Public Construction and Regional Development seeking compensation for the fact that they had lost their property owing to an administrative error committed by the defendant bodies in 1958. They claimed the current value of the apartment, estimated at 54,000 Bulgarian levs (BGN) (27,000 euros (EUR)). The claim was rejected by final judgment of the Supreme Court of Cassation of 27 June 2006 on the grounds that the relevant legislation – the State Responsibility for Damage Act 1989 – did not apply retrospectively and that the law provided for a special compensation scheme by bonds in cases like that of the applicants.
14.  In 2000, it became possible for the applicants to obtain compensation from the State in the form of bonds which could be used in privatisation tenders or sold to brokers.
15.  The applicants applied for compensation by bonds only in July 2006, when their claim for damage was rejected. On 16 August 2007 the regional governor declared their request inadmissible for having been submitted outside the three-month time-limit of the adoption of that provision in January 2000. The governor pointed that recent amendments of the restitution law (see paragraph 18 below) had not provided for a new time-limit.
16.  Since an unspecified date the applicants have lived in Sofia, in service accommodation provided by the second applicant’s husband’s office.